In one I was a dog, reason enoughto extend my hand now to dogs and stay as long as they require. Each lifeas a cat was short and throttledwith rage. Countless more went bynameless and wriggling, capable of sensation, but not language.In another I was the soldier bearing torches to burn a city. And onceI died in a city that burned, choked on the stink of my blackand boiling blood. I killed once for love, and I was killed. The startof wisdom comes with finding no difference between the two.Countless existences vanishedin an afternoon, winged fragmentscycling through birth, reproduction and death between lunch and dinner.Once I was a courtesan, bathedin the juice of pomegranates, my fleshrubbed soft by milk and pumice. I was a lover of whores, who diedof drunkenness and lay undiscovered until snow melt. One life wrotea path into history's slow books where it still lies, waitingto be unburied. But each life believed itself the single one I had,before the door that groans open at the end made clear how manybodies I dwelt in, flesh not shed like a garment, but healedlike a scratch too shallow to leave a scar or commandany portion of dirt where they fall.

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